


The Price of Your Mistake

by wsm021



Series: Whose Truth Is This? [1]
Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:30:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wsm021/pseuds/wsm021
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She shouldn't be so surprised but she is, him conceding defeat she can accept. But him leaving her... its a concept she just can't fathom.</p>
<p>3x22 AU. Imagine if the 3x22 had ended with the delena phone call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of Your Mistake

"I told you Elena... remember? We talked about this. We… Damon and I, agreed it was best. He's fine. Really he is" Stefan can't even look her in the eye anymore. No matter how many times he's repeated himself, no matter how sincerely he pleaded with her to understand she just looked at him as if he wasn't speaking English anymore. Oddly enough she understands everything but this. She understands that Klaus was gone, and that the line was still kicking somehow .

_That it was over ( at least for now)._

Alaric was off chasing originals and they were safe and it seemed Elena had made a choice. He wanted nothing more to get lost in her. And she'd let him. He'd met her at the house, met her with hands and lips and eyes ready to devour . He'd been happy, happier than he had been in all year. Happiness for a night.

Then the morning came. The dawn of a new day, the first ray of light breaking through the dark of night and all that. And with it, as the clichés would have it, came the consequences of actions made in the dark room of an empty home. He pretended to be asleep, wanted to know how exactly she would react to finding in him her bed. She hadn't disappointed.

A faint kiss to his shoulder, lovingly bidding him good morning. And he'd almost opened his eyes, almost returned the gesture until he had felt her pull away. Stretching to reach for her phone. He would have thought nothing of it if not for the heavy sigh and collapse. The no messages sigh followed by the way her body had practically imploded at the realization that Damon hasn't tried to reach her. He tried to comfort himself that she'd thought of him first, kissed him first.

_Similar to the way she had met him first._

She's in the shower when he "wakes up" and decides to make breakfast and try to act as if this was all he'd ever wanted. She still felt for him. Stefan was sure that. It would just take some work to get back to where they were.

The first time she asks him what's taken Damon so long he almost doesn't have the heart to answer her. Except they were all about honesty now

_And he wouldn't repeat the mistakes of the past._

The look on her face was one he will never be able to erase from his mind. The blankness of her stare... the void in her eyes. It was as if the earth had stopped rotating and every thing that every meant anything was now gone. It only lasts a minute. Maybe even less than that,

_But it was enough._

"It's been a week Stefan…" She can't help the desperation that pours through her voice, pools in her eyes, seeps out from her pores and suffocates her lungs. She almost expects to find herself standing in a ocean of blood from these words that cut like daggers.

But silence was not an option. _This conversation._ _These words,_ _they were all she had._

This had been her reality for six days, thirteen hours and 46mins. This conversation that started the minute Damon hadn't come home. The one they've been having every minute thereafter. Elena was of the belief that they needed to look for him, because obviously he was lost, obviously he needed help. Yet somehow Stefan was under the delusional opinion that he had left. 

_Left her._

She's hurting him. She knows that Stefan is reading regret in her words. She just can't bring herself to care. Elena refused to believe that Damon would leave her. He had never… could and would never. How and more importantly why- she can't wrap her head around it to evem properly question what was happening.

  Unless maybe he didn't leave her. Maybe she left him. Maybe she told him he wasn't good enough anymore, maybe she told him there was nothing left to ~~fight for~~ to stay for. Maybe she told him this wasn't his home anymore, that _she_ wouldn't be his home. And maybe it's not a maybe.

She did do that, all that and more.

Elena lets Stefan steer the conversation in a new direction. She pretends it's less than what it is, the way she always has with Damon. Only now she can finally see the truth. _"You want a love that consumes you. You want passion and adventure. Maybe even a little danger"_


End file.
